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I thought it would be best to start a new thread on this new offering from Paul Brook.

A weighty tome of close to 600 pages, the Chrysalis of the Polymath covers a wide range of effects and routines designed to demonstrate your mental prowess. There are real treasures is in this book.

I just finished reading the 70+ pages on The Knight's Tour and Paul serves up a great recipe for delivering the routine as a stand alone event.

Two things have traditionally challenged the presentation: the time it takes to go through the moves and the need for a mnemonic device.

Paul offers a solution for both problems and complements them with ways to really get the audience engaged and provides helpful supplements hosted on his website.

His method and handling will work beautifully with Lior Manor's computer-based Tour.

He then cleverly shows how his solution to the Tour can also be used for other effects! This is lateral thinking in the highest order.

The presentations are scripted in his trademark psychological approach, but can be modified to suit your own persona.

Can't wait to read the next chapters!

Total Aris

Look forward to reading your review when you've finished the book.

'Glad to hear this initial impression, not that I'm surprised. Still studying "The Alchemical Tools" here, and I'm looking forward to this new one landing here in the next week or so.

Small correction, the title is Chrysalis of a Polymath, apologies to the man who knows

So the Knight's Tour leads into a series of effects that apply Paul's particular solution.

Imagine using a system for solving the Knight's Tour for other effects and routines. The book provides some great applications of this idea that make you look like a mental prodigy of some kind.

The handling and presentation is well presented and the thinking behind the effects is very clever.

The phone number routine looks like a combination of two standard ploys in mentalism and turns out it is something completely different.

I'll have a full review up tonight. Gig today so can't get it up to then, however the book is excellent!

Right so a review. This may take a while...

What Paul Says

At just under 600 pages this book is worth the price even as a bookend.
Paul packs in over fifteen effects with astonishing detail and clarity. All of the effects have at some point been a part of Paul's working repertoire and he provides all of the subtleties from these live performances.



Effects include:


Paul Brook's Knight's Tour:

Paul's complete act that has until now been unpublished. This is one of Paul's long standing stand alone events. He has earned upwards of £1000 using this fully scripted act, and now you have can perform it too.



Tossed Out Thoughts:

Audience members are asked to write down either a three or four digit number before the show without the performer being present. These slips of paper are then placed into a transparent bag which is kept, by a spectator, within the audience. The bag is then passed around the audience and at least ten people choose a slip of paper. The Performer is then able to tell each person the number on the piece of paper that he/she has chosen. The bag and remaining slips can be left with any audience member as a souvenir.



The Day Of Any Date:

A participant is asked to write down three important dates, from his past, on the back of the performer's business card. In just over 60 seconds the performer has written the correct day of the week next to each date. This is a fast, fun, and effective way to know the day of any date that is given to you and is utterly impromptu.




Data Spaced:

A strong three/four phase routine.

The performer writes down something on a business card before asking the participant to name any two digit number. Amazingly the performer has correctly predicted the number the participant names. To demonstrate that this was not down to chance this process is repeated. The performer now writes down a star sign and tables the card. The participant names for the first time what their star sign is, the card is turned over (by the participant) to reveal that same star sign is written on the card. The participant now tells the performer his birth date and year, and within FIVE seconds the performer is able to tell the participant what day of the week he was born and what the weather was like on that day. This is checked via a mobile phone and found to be absolutely correct.

Please note that this effect requires no pre-show work and can be performed with a complete stranger at a moments notice.




Something Beautiful:

Two people are sat with the performer. The performer writes down something on a business card and tables it.

Person #1 thinks of a two digit number (this is never named) and through random calculations ends up with a three digit number. Person #2 now looks at the tabled business card and is asked to try and work out what the first person's original two digit number was. Person #2 names the number and it matches the original two digit number that has never left the mind of Person #1.

This same card is turned around revealing to Person #1 the three digit number that he randomly created moments ago, even though this was written at the very beginning of the effect.



Any Word On Any Object:

You are sat with a person and you have her remove any item from her handbag that has a label. After she has done so, you ask her to randomly select a word. You are then able to tell her what word she has chosen. Genuinely impromptu and instantly repeatable with a different word.



Chrysalis Of A Polymath also includes the following effects:


Impossible Memory
Rainbow Memory
The Mental Block
ADDMBADD/Adam Bad
Nin-e-sin
Single Malt
Double Malt Circa. 1119
Code Read
Tell Tail Sign



The book also contains some great audience interaction tips and five fun mental giveaways.

What I Say

This book is totally different to all Paul's other work and almost everything else I've read, and I like it! However, this book will not be for everyone. The basic premise of the book is a series of routines that will give you the appearance of having superhuman abilities. While there are some that appear like standard mentalism routines, the method for those relies on memory and mathematical means.

There is a lot of maths in this book, not to be vain, but I'm very good at maths so I found it all very easy but I don't know how well you all know your 12 times tables! The quicker you can do the sums in your head the better and so the difficulty of all these effects depends on your ability at that. Likewise, the first 200 odd pages rely on you knowing off a 64 number string and the 118 single digits, something that some people may find near impossible where as others will find it relatively easy. As such, I'm not giving the effects a difficulty for the method but for the presentation and subtleties!

The Knights Tour
This is Paul's stand alone presentation of the Knight's Tour and it's excellent! He removes the crib (requiring you to learn a lot of numbers, more on that in a minute) and also makes it engaging for and easily understood by the audience. As you'd expect of any of Paul's effects, this one will take forever to do! You could easily get 40 minutes to an hour out of it.

Now the memorising, this is actually my only disagreement with Paul's book, he recommends learning the necessary 64 number string by rote. Anyone familiar with the Peg System as written up in Harry Lorayne's great book will be aware of it's blatant superiority, however you have to go and learn the peg system (which is excellent anyway). If you don't want to learn the peg system then I suppose Paul's method may be easier but as I already know Lorrayne's way, that's how I intend to remember it!!!

Effect: 10
Difficulty: 4

The Broken Effects

There are three effects that follow the Knight's Tour that all rely on you knowing the massive string of numbers, as Paul says, if you learnt the damn thing, why not use it for other stuff!

Impossible Memory
-The performer memorises a 120 digit string in under thirty seconds that was freely chosen from a bag, which is shown to contain random 120 digit strings, by an audience member

A great memory effect. Paul says he used it as a closer and I can see why. It seems perfectly fair and involves the audience members.

Effect: 10
Difficulty: 4

Rainbow Memory
-At the start of the show, the performer memorises parts of 4 audience member's phone numbers that are chosen at random from a bag that has been in the audience since before the show started. At the very end of the show he comes back and remembers them correctly.

This is the most emotionally involving of the memory effects but is by far the weakest of the three broken open effects.

Effect: 7
Difficulty: 3

Tossed Out Thoughts
-10 people choose random numbers from a bag that's been in the audience since the start of the show, the performer correctly names every one of them.

I love this effect. It is going straight into my next stage show, it is brilliant. The effect is as described above and by Paul. The name is slightly deceptive, you genuinely name each persons number individually, not as a group as in a tossed out deck routine. However, you do have to learn off quite a lot of information on top of the Knight's Tour stuff.

Effect: 10
Difficulty: 5

A Day For Any Date

The method Paul uses for the traditional effect. They give you a date, you name the day very quickly!

The method is excellent and I found it very easy, it took me 30 minutes to have it down perfectly, in my head and in under a minute, now just to pick up the pace! The most important thing about this method is that it is perfect, there are no errors at all. For this you need to know your 12 times tables pretty well however if you're really really bad at maths you could just learn off the eventualities in a few hours!

Data Spaced

This is the multi phased routine Paul describes above. Paul's description of it is spot on. I tried it last night for some friends and friends of friends and it went great, a really nice close up effect.

Effect: 10
Difficulty: 4

Maths Tricks
The book contains a number of pure maths method that Paul either gives a presentation for or leaves up to you to find one. He also names every single one of them! For the sake of mine and everyone else's sanity I will just list what he gives you the ability to do! All these things are done very rapidly.
-Multiply any two digit number by 11.
-Multiply and two digit number by any other two digit number.
-Divide any number, no matter how long, by 9.
-Multiply any number, no matter how long, by any single digit number.
-Multiply any number, no matter how long, by any number between 11 and 19.

Effects Where Maths is the Method
These are a few of the real effects that use maths as some or part of the method.

Thumbthing Boontiful
-Again Paul describes it above, that is how it plays.

I tried this as well last night, went down a treat. A really nice dual reality effect that doesn't scream dual reality.

Effect: 9
Difficulty: 4

Any Word on Any Object
-Very similar to Paul's shopping list effect that he gave out for free, except done with items from the spectators hand bag, pockets, or even a warning sign.

Plays the same as the shopping list trick but is entirely off-the-cuff. I'm not the biggest fan of it but I'm sure a lot of people will like it.

Effect: 7
Difficulty: 3

Code Read
-The spectator reads out a barcode off an object from their pocket, hand bag, etc. but omits one digit. The performer names it.

Paul plays it as a follow on to Any Word on Any Object. It is a clever little effect. Nothing particularly astounding.

Effect: 6
Difficulty: 3

Tell Tail Sign
-They take out a pocket full of change, they mix them up face up face down, you look away, they mix turn a few over, they cover one with their hand, you reveal if it is face up or face down and possibly what coin it is.

The weakest effect in the book. I wouldn't use it at all though maybe someone will use it. (Bear in mind this is weak relative to everything else, it's still a fine impromtu effect).

Effect: 5
Difficulty: 3

Mental Give Aways
Some nice simple mental tricks you can reveal to spectators, one has the possibility to be a prop bet.


Conclusion

The Chrysalis of a Polymath is excellent, it is like a cross between Harry Lorayne's 'How to Develop a Super Powered Memory, a little bit of Corinda's '13 Steps to Mentalism' and Rain Man's biography! Tossed out thoughts is, in my opinion, Paul's greatest effect in publication and Data Spaced comes in a close second. Both will become regular features of my performances. TCOAP is right up there with The Alchemical Tools as essential reading for all mentalists.

10/10 pure and simple.

Brilliant review Harry.

I personally loved the idea behind the barcode effect, and can see it becoming a real winner, as with the any word any label effect

I've only glanced through it though, haven;t bothered to learn anything just yet

First impressions = good though

Harry, I am most impressed that you have managed to construct a lenthy review within a mere four days of receiving this weighty tome. Not only have you read through it in that time, but you appear to have performed a good number of the effects in the book. You is mighty quick on the draw.

Yes, nicely done Harry...not too much too add here. This continues to be a great read.

These effects are not telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance type effects but only mental agility effects. They fit in the 'plausibility' category of mentalism outlined in Hickok's Mentalism Incorporated. While some of the effects can fit into any part of a show,it does not seem that a whole show of this material would be appropriate. Rather, I could see a show building with some of these effects in the beginning, followed by other more 'implausible' ones.

I very much enjoyed the mental calculator chapter and the little 'trick' to solve what look like very complex and multiple calculations.

Been starting to use the stuff in here now

My personal favourite at the moment is the any word on any object effect - a real gem, I think. I used it the other day to close a deal on a very highly paid gig - very happy!

A good book, I think. Well written, and don;t even get me started on the knight's tour! That will certainly take some mastery!

Thanks for the kind words all It seems that it is taking people a LONG time to digest this fatty of a book, so the reviews are trickling in slowly.

Glad you like 'Any Word On Any Object', Chris. It is a powerful impromptu effect. As I say in the book, I used a train warning sign once, that's how versatile the method is.

What object did you use, Chris?

ended up using some kitchen-cleaner spray. It was obviously iompromptu, and I did it with the same person twice - different objects each time. I'm starting to get into it with my own persona now that I am becoming more comfortable with the timing - I haven't been wrong yet!

Blapsing_Beard wrote:ended up using some kitchen-cleaner spray. It was obviously iompromptu, and I did it with the same person twice - different objects each time. I'm starting to get into it with my own persona now that I am becoming more comfortable with the timing - I haven't been wrong yet!

Kitchen cleaner - I love it lol

"Ladies and gentlemen, I will now perform using that well known mentalism staple, the kitchen cleaner!"


Did you mean different objects, or different words on the same object?

haha - I meant the same object different words - my mistake there!

On a seperate note, LIT is becoming a staple in my act now...I brought another, and with a different lock I can do it now, so thankyou for an amazing idea Paul - it is very good!

Back onto CoaP, the any word any object is my favourite thing attempted thus far. I haven't even contemplated even thinking about considering learning the tour yet! Though I am looking forward to nailing it...not neccessarily for the tour itself yet, but for all the otehr effects that come along with it